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Wedge talks about his tenuous job situation

With Mariners management having told general manager Jack Zduriencik he’ll be back for 2014, the question now is whether Eric Wedge and his staff will be retained for next season.

And that’s a question the third-year manager is well aware of as he heads into the final days of a three-year contract with only word that he’s to meet with management after the season ends.

“It’s tough. I feel like I’m hanging out there, that’s the reality of it,” Wedge said Wednesday. “But I’m coming here and doing my job. You know how passionate I am about this team, and these players in particular, and this organization. The unfortunate part about how it’s being handled is the effect it has on the players. That’s why we’re all here, is for the players.

“I’m a strong man, and I’m going to be fine either way,” said Wedge. “But I’d like to see this thing through. We’ve done a lot of developing with a lot of young players over three years. I’d like to be here to lead them and turn the corner. “

Wedge’s contract expires at the end of this year and the Mariners have taken a step back in terms of win-loss record in his third season. After inheriting a team that went 61-101 in 2010, the Mariners finished 67-95 in Wedge’s first season and 75-87 last year. They’re 69-89 now with four games remaining.

Wedge recognizes it’s a bottom-line business and he had higher expectations for this year as well, but feels there are other circumstances at play. The club suffered several critical injuries in the opening weeks and didn’t get the hoped-for contribution from right fielder Michael Morse as well as the critical up-the-middle core of center fielder Franklin Gutierrez, shortstop Brendan Ryan, second baseman Dustin Ackley and catcher Jesus Montero.

Additionally, the back-end of the starting rotation didn’t produce and the bullpen wore down considerably in the second half, all of which led to a considerable youth movement that saw the arrival of numerous rookies, including four – shortstop Brad Miller, second baseman Nick Franklin, catcher Mike Zunino and outfielder Abraham Almonte – who have been starting on a regular basis in the final months and a pitching staff that leaned heavily on first-year players as well.

He understands the youth movement and doesn’t see change at the top now benefitting that rebuilding process.

“Hey, I’ve done this before,” he said of his experience of eventually taking a young Cleveland franchise to the American League Championship Series. “I know how to do it. The worst thing they could do is blow it up and start over. You’ve got to stick something at some point in time.”

Wedge said he doesn’t think the timeline is any different than what he was presented when he took the job, but that the continued reliance on young players has to be factored in.

“It’s just the way it’s worked out,” he said. “Because you’ve got a lot of good young players coming, and it’s either that or you have to go out and get somebody. We took the alternative of bringing our younger players up. So if you do that, you’re not going to win as many games. But you’re going to be better-suited for the future. It has to be a long-term plan.

“I didn’t get here 12 years ago, I didn’t get here six years ago. I got here less than three years ago. So this is what we’re doing, this is what we’re committed to. You have to have strength. You’ve got to have conviction with what you do. But if somebody else is sitting in this seat tomorrow, they’re going to be in a decent situation moving forward, really.”

Wedge, 45, missed 27 games in late July and August after a stroke hospitalized him briefly. The team was 59-67 when he returned, but has gone 10-22 since. He feels his health situation was a definite disruption to things when it occurred right in the midst of an eight-game winning streak, but shouldn’t be a factor going forward next year.

“That would be unfair,” he said. “It’s been very clear to me from all the doctors I’m going to be 100 percent. I’m going to have to get into the offseason and then I’ll be fine. They said 3-6 months. But hell, I’m going to be better than I ever have been because evidently my brain wasn’t getting enough oxygen each and every night and I was working all day to catch up from it.

“I’m looking to be fueled and fired the rest of the way. I feel great. I feel like I’m 33 years old again. My best managing days are ahead of me whether it’s here or somewhere else. I want to be here. I moved my family out here. I’m committed to the community. I’m all in.

“I haven’t done anything wrong except for come out here and coach up these kids and teach them how to play at the big-league level,” Wedge said. “That’s what I do. I don’t bitch about anything. I’m here to help these kids become good solid big-league players and hopefully solid citizens in Seattle. So if that is not enough for them, then so be it.”

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3 Comments

Eric Wedge is 100% the perfect manager. The back office (owners and GM) is great at undercutting just when they should be raving praise. NO other manager could have been so good. Same going forward. If they don’t get 100% behind Wedge with a multiyear contract, they will TOTALLY lose me as a fan, because I will have had it with their thinking. They have been the problem. And a good management back office should forcefully support and endorse and encourage Wedge. Instead, their silence and games have been totally destructive to everyone, including themselves. I’m still a 100% fan there if they support what we have now.

Wedge’s constant changing of the lineup seemed to keep players from getting comfortable doing their jobs, especially the batting lineup. I know major league players should be able to do their job regardless of where they bat in the lineup but I look at many of the other productive teams and notice that their lineups stay pretty much the same all the time. Back in the ’50s I could name the lineup of my favorite teams (Mil Braves, Brooklyn Dodgers) on any given day without fear of missing someone. What you are supposed to do at the plate is directly related to where you bat. for example, the 1st 2 guys are supposed to get on base, the next 2-3 are supposed to be run producers. We hit lots of home runs this year but had the lowest hits with RISP. When the Mariners played in the Kingdom they hit lots of home runs too but didn’t win games because they didn’t hit with RISP (also they had some less than effective pitching for many years). We have the nucleus for some good starting pitching but need to rebuild the bullpen. As for the argument that we brought up a lot of young players and that caused us to lose games, I think that those players played better than the players who were replaced in the process (Ryan replaced by Miller, Ackley replaced – sort of – by Franklin & yes Ackley finally started to produce late in the season, Montero by Zunino – indirectly). Yes injuries to Guti and Moore really hurt but who expected Raul to do what he did this year? I am done venting. Sorry for the long post.

Charles your plan is fine for one-step beyond what Wedge had to work with. No matter where in the order one bats, a player must first, foremost and always learn to be selective, then learn not to lose aggressiveness while becoming more selective. Eric Wedge had to diligently teach this to all the youngsters and to some of the veterans. In most cases, this critical teaching on how to balance being selective and aggressive was the ONLY thing they needed to learn, WAY before they were ready to add nuances of hitting strategies in the batting order. Wedge had to work on square one, and he did a super job of teaching. Most of the players became much more competent batters than before they had Wedge as a teacher. Had he had an appropriately supportive back office, more time to work with what he had, or if he had had more good batters, he would this coming year have been able to work on the square two approach you bring up, which makes sense. But absolute basics of selectivity and aggressiveness must first be learned well, and those are the same all through the batting order. Given what he was given to start from, Wedge was in a process…first things first. You can’t judge him for an end-point when the team needs to learn things in order. He was doing great.

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